Attending to the peculiar significance of finance(s) and the financier in Old Regime France, this article analyzes narratives that rehabilitate both, circa 1740-1755, in their political, social and biographical contexts. Positive representations are not thought to have been common. Yet following the Law debacle, restoration of traditional court finance resulted in effective administrative practices, universalizing policies and opportunities for merit, combined with money, to drive advancement, competing with hereditary privilege. Across genres, Charles Pinot-Duclos and Charles de Fieux, the Chevalier de Mouhy, depicted how upstart elites enact virtue, philanthropy and patriotism through finance. Their depictions reflected State policies and served common interests of writers and their protectors and patrons. Yet by emphasizing tensions in mid-century society, their texts also challenged readers to reflect critically on relations among finance, politics, society and indebtedness, anticipating a later focus on political economy as such. For today's readers grappling with dilemmas of modern finance, society and obligation, they provide provocative precedents.

This article aims to analyse the finances of the Coimbra city council from 1557 to 1836. Our objective is to examine the causes of long-term changes in municipal revenue and expenditure, particularly during the extended period of decline that occurred between the mid-17th century and the late 18th century. This study will focus on the composition of revenue and expenditure, as well as on revenue collection mechanisms. We aim to present the empirical data on the revenue and expenditure components that allow us to understand the changes that took place. Finally, we hope to be able to explain the causes that led to significant variations in revenue and expenditure in a dialogue with existing literature. The primary sources used correspond to municipal revenue and expenditure books, supplemented by other sources such as legislation, correspondence and auction books.

This commentary is a response to three articles on integrated care systems in this journal. It explores some aspects of the latest transformation of England's National Health Service (NHS) and raises some questions on the extent to which the proposed NHS Long Term Plan can deliver on the current challenges.

Across the Midwest, substantial funding and personnel time have been allocated to encourage farmers to adopt a wide range of conservation practices but adoption rates for many of these practices remain low. Prior research focuses largely on the influence of individual-level factors (e.g., beliefs, attitudes) on conservation practice adoption rather than on contextual factors (e.g., seasons) that might also play a role. In the present study, we considered seasonal variation and its potential influence on farmer cover crop decision-making. We first established how farmer temporal and financial resources fluctuate across the year and then compared the annual agricultural decision and cover crop decision calendars. We also considered farmer cover crop perceptions and likely behaviors. To study this, we surveyed the same Midwestern farmers in the spring, summer and winter within a 12-month period. Results indicated that farmers were generally the least busy and the most financially comfortable in the winter months. Moreover, farmers perceived the benefits of cover crops differently throughout the year. These results indicate that seasonality can be a confounding factor which should be considered when designing and conducting research and farmer engagement. As researchers, it is our responsibility to understand the specific calendar experienced by our sample and how that may influence responses so we can examine theory-supported factors of interest rather than seasonality as a driver of farmer responses. As practitioners, it is important to use research findings to engage with farmers about conservation in a way that prioritizes communicating about the most salient aspects of the practice at the time of year when farmers will be most receptive.

Long-term poverty, precarious employment, low pay, the increased pension age and real-term reductions in welfare benefits, including bereavement allowances, have brought into focus the financial vulnerability of many older women aged 55 years and older in the United Kingdom. In this article, survey data were analysed alongside evidence from observations of debt support meetings and interviews with older women who were receiving debt advice from a support charity. The findings suggest that older women were more likely to have financial problems than older men, particularly those women who were living on low incomes and who were separated or divorced. Following the breakdown of a relationship, many older women were at increased risk of more debt and bankruptcy, particularly those aged between 55 and 64 years and those in routine and semi-routine occupations. Many women had kept their financial problems hidden due to fear and shame whilst bringing up their children and some had been subject to coercive control and economic abuse by their former husbands or partners. It is important that any pension reforms, changes to minimum wage rates, and new divorce and domestic abuse legislation and welfare policies take account of the circumstances of separated, divorced and widowed older women. More financial support and advice needs to be provided to older women facing financial difficulties.

While the influence of socioeconomic status and financial balance on conflict in female-male relationships has been widely examined, less is known about these phenomena in male-male relationships. This study consists of qualitative individual in-depth interviews with 20 self-identified gay/bisexual men to examine perceptions of financial roles within relationships, and the influence on relationship control and conflict. For some participants, financial roles were static, while others experienced dynamic roles across and within relationships. Some participants characterised financial imbalance using gendered constructs, ascribing masculine and feminine terms to financial roles. Overall, financial inequalities resulted in perception of power imbalance and conflict.

Understanding money requires that we first grasp what makes money so significant—so valuable—to us. The article thus examines the sociology outlined by Geoffrey Ingham and criticises its ontology of money as a measure of value underpinned by state authority. By contrast, it argues that money ought to be primarily intended as value in itself. Accordingly, money’s most specific attribute is none of its canonical functions but rather purchasing power: the power not to pay, or else the power to buy time. The latter is not the mere product of state (fiscal) agency, but is entangled from the start with the production of liquidity and the construction of speculative markets for debt. Thus the paper emphasises the importance of concrete bank discounting vis-à-vis abstract accounting in concrete processes of monetisation, and shows how modern money, far from cancelling debts, is historically constructed within liquid financial relations so as to “buy time” and systematically procrastinate the final “rendering of accounts” for debtors. As a result, money cannot exist without the simultaneous existence of a debt that it will never discharge.

In the second and third centuries AD, many of the cities in the eastern Mediterranean could boast about having their own athletic games. In the fourth century, however, these games quickly declined. In recent years, the traditional explanations for the end of athletic games, most prominently the supposed ban by Theodosius, have been proven unfounded. This paper proposes an alternative explanation: institutional and financial changes hindered the successful organization of athletic contests by the cities in the fourth and fifth centuries. In order to show the effect of these changes, this paper first offers a detailed analysis of how athletic contests were founded and funded in the early imperial period. It then examines how and to what extent these procedures and funds were affected by changes in late antiquity. The decline was not caused by a general financial crisis - in fact the estates (partially) funding the games remained a stable form of financing. Instead the shift of power to a centralized bureaucracy limited the cities in their administration of the games: they could no longer independently meet deficits in the agonistic budget from the city treasury and had to rely increasingly on elite sponsors, whose ambitions focused mainly on the provincial capitals and who gradually lost their interest in athletics.

This article endeavours to illuminate the socio-economic dimension of Paul's κοινωνία with the Philippians. It initially adduces a representative sample of philological evidence which demonstrates that κοινωνία and its cognates (κοινωνός, κοινωνέω) frequently convey the sense of partnership in some economic enterprise, and establishes a semantic equivalence between κοινωνία and societas (partnership). It is then argued that, from a Roman socio-economic and legal perspective, Paul's κοινωνία consisted of a societas unius rei (i.e. societas evangelii), whereby Paul supplied the ars and opera (skill and labour), while the Philippians contributed the pecunia (funds) to ensure the progress of his mission.